We’re still waiting for someone to strike the right balance, but some decent efforts have been seen. In Tomb Raider, it was casting the perfect actress for the job (it was just a shame the story was so iffy). In Doom, it was including a full action-sequence shot in first-person perspective (it was just a shame the story was so iffy). In Hitman, it was some beautifully constructed action set-pieces (it was just a shame the story was so iffy).

The apparent supernatural bent being put on Max Payne is looking a bit iffy, but in terms of nice touches, this one is nice:

I particularly like the line, “I knew the sun would come up tomorrow, and I knew I would be alone to see it.“

Where to begin…?

This film is weird. The setting reminds me a lot of The Fifth Element with a starker colour palette. Cars float around the city, or ride around on rails. The high-rise streets are populated with a mix of humans, aliens and mutants. A lot of the designs for both vehicles and buildings have an art-deco look. It’s certainly a feast for the eyes.

As is the lead, Jill; a tall, slim, white-skinned, blue ‘haired’ woman who can read minds, shoot people with the palm of her hand and permanently dye human skin blue with her tears.

With the exception of Jill – played by French actress Linda Hardy adopting a very convincing non-European accent – and one or two others in elaborate costume, the whole non-human cast is rendered in CGI. It seems very strange at first, given these characters are all humanoid and look as close to human as it was possible to get with CGI four years ago, but it fits with the overall odd look of the film. Because everything is coloured so starkly, and the whole thing looks so surreal anyway, the CGI characters don’t look as out of place as they might’ve done in a more straight-forward or colourful sci-fi.

Immortel is a strange film with a convoluted plot and bizarre aesthetic, but it’s captivating, atmospheric and immensely original.

Yes, another day, another comic-book adaptation; this time, 30 Days of Night. Josh Hartnet (who I’ve, till now, hated in everything he’s been in except Black Hawk Down) is the sheriff of a sleepy little town in the far, frozen north that goes 30 days without sunshine. One dusk, a bunch of particularly vicious vampires roll into town and make a particularly big mess of the locals.

Continuing with Hollywood’s new-found love of holding no barrs, the story-telling is kept very minimalist in favour of showing the gruesome vamps doing gruesome stuff and looking decidedly gruesome (black eyes, pale skin, long, sharp nails and a full set of very sharp teeth, covered in blood both fresh and stale throughout).

If anything, the story-telling is a little too minimalist. For example, we’re never told how a nine year-old girl manages to survive almost a month in a frozen town all on her lonesome, with nothing but hungry monsters for company. Though I appreciate the idea of cutting through the crap and getting straight to fun stuff, the side-effect is certain scenes coming across as random and/or silly.

In fact, the plot movement is incredibly jumpy, with the first 20 or 30 minutes setting things up over the course of a single day, before jumping to a week into the ordeal then, without warning, 29 days.

It’s also a shame the vampires aren’t developed further. For all their brutality, the head of the pack is a fan of making speeches (in some undisclosed language) and everything he says and does seems to hint at some deeper story that is never told.

On the other hand, the story-telling mechanic does prevent a lot of the usual horror-movie clichés (or, at least, sweeps them aside before they wrench your gut too much) and it also helps keep the pace up, despite the number of quieter scenes, in place to crank up the tension.

All-in-all, despite its patchiness, it’s a lot of fun, with some great effects and set-pieces and masses of gore, as well as solid performances from the leads (Hartnet and the head vamp in particular).